The Cook County Board of Commissioners has officially created the new property tax incentive that helped Chicago reel in a quantum computing campus at the former U.S. Steel South Works site.
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The new Class 8 MICRO incentive offers property tax relief by dropping the site's tax rate from 25% to 10% for 30 years and was approved in a voice vote Thursday without objection, Crain's Chicago Business reports. The incentive isn't renewable.
The tax break helped state leaders secure a campus in South Chicago anchored by PsiQuantum. Officials unveiled plans for the site in late July. The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park aims to be “up and running” by 2027, Curt Bailey, president of Related Midwest, told Crain's. Related Midwest is the developer heading up the site.
“By offering this new targeted incentive that makes investing and operating a business in Cook County more attractive, we’re signaling to companies at the forefront of innovation that Cook County offers a competitive, supportive hub and ecosystem for investment and growth,” Board President Toni Preckwinkle said in a statement reported on by The Chicago Tribune.
PsiQuantum will occupy 300K SF at the campus and hire at least 150 new people to fill positions to operate the facility. The campus has 128 acres ready for development and an additional 312 acres available for expansion.
Quantum computing is a next-generation computing technology that enables solving problems too advanced for supercomputers that exist now, Brian DeMarco, associate director for the IQMP, told Bisnow in August. This could include everything from figuring out how Amazon should distribute its trucks across Chicago to minimize fuel costs to simulating the design of pharmaceuticals, he said.
Illinois leaders are hoping to lure people and companies at the forefront of the new technology to the state.
“Right here beneath our feet will be a catalyst for a potential revolution in science and technology and the betterment of life for all humankind,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at the anchor tenant announcement.
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